The most common manner in which scrap wire and cable is accumulated as for storage or recycling is by winding of the wire or cable onto reels. Once loaded with the scrap wire or cable the reels may then be readily transported to a processing plant for disposal, recycling, or other use. It is almost inevitably necessary to remove the coiled scrap from the reel in order to process the wire or cable and to reuse the reel itself. The condition of the scrap wire and cable however is often such that it is frayed and so intertwined on the reel as to be difficult to unload by normal unreeling operations. Even in those cases where unreeling may be readily accomplished, the task ofunreeling is inherently a time and space consuming process. This is a particularly inefficient process where the condition of the scrap or cable once removed is of little concern.
Heretofore, as exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 2,670,570, which is assigned to the assignee of the present invention, apparatus has been devised for removing scrap wire from spools by cutting the wire while it remains wound upon the spool. This is done by driving a cutter blade in the plane of the center of the spool whereby each convolution of wire on the spool is simultaneously severed. The wire is then free to fall off of the spool as by gravity. In this manner the wire is simultaneously both removed from the spool and cut into numerous segments to facilitate handling.
Although apparatus of the type just described is useable in removing wires of relatively small gauge and strength from spools they are not effective in removing strong, large size wires and cables. This is attributable to the fact that there simply is insufficient force available to drive the cutter simultaneously through numerous convolutions of relatively strong material without damaging the spools.
In addition to the problem just described in supplying sufficient severing power to sever numerous convolutions of relative strong wire and cable directly from reels, other problems also exist in utilizing this method to avoid unreeling. For example, reels of the type adapted to support large cables and wires are themselves extremely heavy and bulky to handle. Typically such reels weigh from 200 to 1,500 pounds in an unloaded condition and from 500 to 12,000 pounds in a fully loaded condition. It thus is difficult to move such reels to a cutter mount or mandrel and to mount and dismount it in an efficient manner. In addition, since reels come in various sizes, to center and sever coils from reels of varying hub widths requires the use of either several cutters of differing sizes or of one cutter with interchangeable blades. These latter cutters must, of course, be recentered each time a replacement is made in order to avoid the cutter blade from either striking one or both of the reel flanges, or in not severing all of the convolutions. If as little as one or two convolutions remain uncut after a cutting operation, removal efficiency may be diminished since those coils must either be recut or unreeled. It is to these problems to which the present invention is primarily addressed.